A School History of the United States eBook

6. The attempts to find a southwest passage or
a northwest passage through our continent led to the
exploration of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

7. The new world was called America, after the
explorer Americus.

8. The voyage of Magellan proved that the earth
is round.

CHAPTER II

THE SPANIARDS IN THE UNITED STATES

%11. The Spaniards explore the Southwest.%—­Now
it must be noticed that up to 1513 no European had
explored the interior of either North or South America.
They had merely touched the shores. In 1513 the
work of exploration began. Balboa then crossed
the Isthmus of Panama. In 1519 Cortes (cor’-tez)
landed on the coast of Mexico with a body of men, and
marched boldly into the heart of the country to the
city where lived the great Indian chief or king, Montezuma.
Cortes took the city and made himself master of Mexico.
This was most important; for the conquest of Mexico
turned the attention of the Spaniards from our country
for many years, and finally led to the exploration
of the Southwest. But the first explorers of
what is now the United States came from Cuba in 1528.

[Illustration: Map of 1530, Sloane MS.[1]]

[Footnote 1: Notice that the two continents begin
to take shape, and that as the result of Magellan’s
voyage is not generally known, North America is placed
very near to Java.]

In that year Narvaez (nar-vah-eth), excited by Pineda’s
accounts of the Mississippi Indians and their golden
ornaments, set forth with 400 men to conquer the north
coast of the Gulf of Mexico. At Apalachee Bay
he landed, and made a raid inland. On returning
to the shore, he missed his ships, and after traveling
westward on foot for a month, built five rude vessels,
and once more put to sea. For six weeks the little
fleet hugged the shore, till it came to the mouth
of the Mississippi, where two of the boats were upset
and Narvaez was drowned. The rest reached the
coast of Texas in safety. But famine and the
tomahawk soon reduced the number of the survivors
to four. These were captured by bands of wandering
Indians, were carried over eastern Texas and western
Louisiana, till, after many strange adventures and
vicissitudes, they met beyond the Sabine River.[1]
Protected by the fame they had won for sorcery, and
led by one Cabeza de Vaca, they now wandered westward
to the Rio Grande[2] (ree’-o grahn’-da)
and on by Chihuahua (chee-wah’-wah) and Sonora
to the Gulf of California, and by this to Culiacan,
a town near the west coast of Mexico, which they reached
in 1536. They had crossed the continent.